A Daring Escape and the End of an Era

Today Matthew's day care notified us that he was running a fever and is lethargic, so please come get the germ infested child and don't expose the day care to bacterial infection ever again. Of course, by the time Chris picked him up, he wasn't running a fever. Also, Matthew's lethargy had also disappeared and he jumped for five minutes straight while the Wiggles sang the "Emu" song.

So I came home to be the nurturing mother-type and arrived just in time to put Matthew down for his nap. (Good timing!) So I put him in his crib for a nap. He's almost 2 1/2, but we decided for the good of all mankind to let Matthew sleep in his crib until he figured out how to get out of it. It just made sense and it was cheaper than using a kennel to confine him. (Just kidding. We already had the kennel.)

He didn't want a nap and kept calling, ever so softly, "Mama . . . come up here! Mama! Mama!" I let this go on for a few minutes and he stopped. Satisfied that my ignoring his needs finally encouraged him to go to sleep, I sat down in the living room.

A few minutes later, Chris and I heard some noises coming from upstairs. We looked at each other. Chris said, "It sounds like he's out of his bed." I agreed and walked over to the stairs. Very slowly, I ascended the steps, listening as the sounds got closer.

Just two more steps to go and Matthew poked his head out of his door and smiled at me. He was free and he wasn't going to let me change that situation. He attempted to lock his doorknob, but I was faster and swooped him up.

Then I did something that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do: I put him back in the crib and told him to show me how he got out of it. Matthew just stared at me like he wasn't sure to really comply with that order or not. Mom was encouraging him to do something 1)dangerous and 2)most likely something he wasn't supposed to do.

But soon that fleeting thought passed and he gingerly swung his leg over the top bar of the crib, pulled himself on top, balanced, then flung his other leg over the top. He very carefully (and with great control of his upper body, I might add) lowered himself to floor. He looked up at me and smiled and said, "Downtares?"

So now our little Houdini can escape his crib -- our only bastion of sanity. No more can we trust the confines of his bed that allowed him to play with his stuffed animals while we grabbed just a few more precious moments of sleep. And I guess it's time to get rid of the "baby" things that we've retained, the crib, the changing table, the 20 crocheted baby blankets I've never really used because Matthew was a sweaty baby and didn't often sleep under a blanket.

So now we begin a new era -- the one where he sleeps in a big boy bed and is able to get down and ask for one more story, one more cup of water, one more "I need to tell you something . . ."